true
grit
Behind the action in the ring and the glitzy crowd
in the arena, a few good men trained to the peak
of physical fitness for deadly execution. the real
Stars of the Super fight league are the unknown
fighters who have finally seen the bright lights.
an exclusive journey through broken limbs,
shattered dreams and that unforgettable fire.
Text & Photographs ASIF KHAN

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“Yes, that’s the way.”
“Go on, push him
against the wall.
Don’t let go of him.”
“Yes, yes, on top of
him, just sit there
and grapple.”
“Come on, come on.
Just keep pushing
harder. Don’t give
up. Go on.”
“Down on the
ground, boy. Down.”

ll this, and a volley of even harsher words
fill your ears as you move around the
gym—ever careful of that runaway punch
or that stray kick. Primeval grunts and
some heavy-duty panting follow. You
don’t want to get caught in the action as
flesh works on flesh, glistening with the
shiny gleam of sweat in the starkness
of white light. As every sinew flexes in
defiance to the contour of skin, your eyes
struggle to capture the surroundings. Your
mouth is dry because it has been half-open
for much of the last few minutes.
You’d be mistaken if you thought we
were talking about how we ended up in
the midst of some heavy BDSM action.
While we’d love to bring you the details
of that setting too, we’re talking about a
duel—the oldest way for man to display his
physical supremacy. That’s how evolution
has conventionalised survival since the
Stone Age. Pain is the feeling that accords
a far greater degree of pleasure when brutal victory is in sight. We’re talking about
mixed martial arts (MMA) fighters going at
it in Nashik, the bedrock of the recentlyformed Super Fight League (SFL), India’s
first professional MMA championship.
A dominant city in its region, Nashik
is a major hub for engineering—that has
fuelled the geek in us. It is our very own
Napa Valley in the making, because where
else in India do you have sprawling vineyards just outside the city? And it has a
heritage of sport. But as it becomes home
to MMA, you can’t help but wonder if all
the tech, wine and blood will mix together.
In the gym, of course, you won’t want
to “mix.” This is one of those instances
where you would rather watch from the
periphery. The brawny men engaged in
combat are adept in multiple disciplines
of martial arts, and are learning the fine art
of blending them to become the “perfect
fighter.” This is a sport in which each
individual uses his unique style inside
the ring. Any lesser mortal suffering from
delusional courage would be pulp before
he could even call out for his mama.

The Big Business Move

SFL has been cofounded by entrepreneur
Raj Kundra and Sanjay Dutt—one of India’s
best actors, a fitness freak and lesser
known ambassador for the Boxing Federation of India. The man behind the action is
Daniel Isaac—or Dan—who’s been training
in MMA for more than 15 years and started
his training in Deolali, a town known
for being a British military base. Dan is a
tough guy, but you wouldn’t know it—his
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pepper hair hide the fact that he is the first
Indian to have been a World Champion
in kickboxing and a gold medallist at the
WAKO Kickboxing Olympics. Still, he has
the crouched and carefully-measured demeanour of a fighter, and you’d avoid the
temptation of asking him to a duel or trying any Enter The Dragon fanboy moves. Dan
still practises his moves at the bootcamp
with the other fighters, even though his
main job is to ensure that the SFL clicks.
Helping him is one of the best-known
sports agents in the US and VP of business
development for Takedown Entertainment, Ken Pavia. He’s also doubling as the
CEO of SFL and has represented more than
55 professional MMA fighters through the
years, including Chris Lytle, Benji Radach,
Ricco Rodriguez and Chris Santos.
With a team like this, you’d expect the
going would be easy as hell. Nothing could
be further from the truth. Sure, SFL has
the right buzz already, and the stands were
filled for the inaugural fight on March 11.
In attendance were celebs and, more important, some hardcore MMA enthusiasts.
Indians have always been into martial arts,
but this is a different sport altogether.

Down boy,
that’s how you
go down.

No time for
bare knuckles

The Lives & Loves Of MMA

The rise of MMA has been fairly recent,
although the hybridisation of martial arts
disciplines has happened throughout the
history of combat sports. The essence of
MMA is the search for a unified discipline
that borrows the best moves from each
fighting technique, with the aim of evolving an almost-invincible combatant. Some
commonly used disciplines are wrestling,
judo, karate, Muay Thai, regular boxing,
and taekwondo.
The great Bruce Lee summed it up
beautifully in the guiding philosophy
for Jeet Kune Do, the hybrid martial arts
system he developed: “The best fighter is
someone who can adapt to any style, to
be formless, to adopt an individual’s own
style and not follow the system of styles.”
The idea was to work on a “free-flowing
form without a form.”
Ancient Greek fighters employed this
in Pankration, a style of combat that
blended boxing and wrestling, and warriors were trained so that they could use it
in hand-to-hand combat on the battlefield.
The level of proficiency in Pankration was
so high among the elite fighters—including Spartan warriors—that they were not
allowed to enter competitions with other
Greeks for fear of almost certain death for
the opponents.
Over the last few centuries, as geog-

MMA fighter Anup warms
up on the mat and we
wonder which God is
placated with this posture
of obeisance. Oh, right, the
save-my-skin God.

Fighting alone
is the best to
way to be safe
from injury.
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Yes, too much love
can turn violent, as
Chaitanya grapples
with an opponent.

Muay Thai fighter
Ricky practises his
striking moves, as the
bag tries to run away.

was more a mind game than anything
else. Confidence can easily be mistaken
for arrogance, something we take for
granted. But, in the ring, it can cost you
heavily. Shabbir has trained extensively
in Thailand, but has found that the training regimen he was accustomed to was
not half as relevant in a real MMA fight as
the one he’s being put through. While it’s
easy to come across athletes who aspire
to be the fittest, fastest or strongest, it
is only in MMA that you’ll find someone
who wants to be the “most dangerous.”
Like Ken Shamrock, an MMA legend.
Confidence will get you anywhere,
they say, and this is truer for MMA than
anything else. That’s the first thing you
notice about Allen, a burly fighter from

Confidence can easily be mistaken for arrogance, But it can cost you heavily in
the ring. and the fight is more a delicate mind game than a brutal brawl.
Punjab who is a stark contrast to the inyour-face Shabbir. One of the most senior
fighters in the League who’s trained with
Dan for more than half a decade, he is
one of the first Indians to have represented the country in MMA. Although he is
soft-spoken and humble, his confidence
is a numbing combination of experience, fitness and training. Growing up in
Punjab, he quickly latched on to MMA
after he saw a demonstration and now
considers the Academy his foster family.
He has trained for hours on end, and
has had too many bruises to name. All
around him, the fighters gather for that
additional nugget of information, some
advice about dodging that one kick.

“Yes, c’mon, big
boy, Imma show
you who’s Daddy!”

raphy was becoming an afterthought, and
cultures from the farthest extremities of
the globe were waking up to each other,
homogenisation of arts—martial and brutal
included—became an organic process. One
of the chief developments came with the
absorption of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and a lot
of the credit for this goes to one Gracie
family. They brought the Vale Tudo style of
competitive combat to the US, laying the
foundation for competitive MMA with the
Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) in
the early ’90s. The league was an immediate underground sensation, and soon had
a massive following. With cable TV and the
Internet, the sport spread across Europe,
Asia and West Asia, and with that came similar local competitions. The fights weren’t
pretty, but they had devoted fans. In fact,
the brutality and lack of formulated “rules”
in some countries forced most fighters into
obscure basements, backyards, alleys and
000

Situated in a quaint commercial complex in
Nashik, Tiger’s Gym looks unassuming. But
the basic layout and simplistic functionality
houses the bootcamp for what could be the
most eloquent fighters in India. Indian SFL
fighters who train here look to Dan and his
Tiger’s Gym team to equip them with the
knowhow and innovative tricks that will
help them move into the big arena, leaving
behind poverty, idle training and even
infamy. A locked door to the secure Nashik
gym—with a menacing mascot staring
down—separates you from the whirlwind,
testosterone-filled interiors.
A cherubic young fighter may open the
door, but you’d know better than to let the
child-like demeanour fool you. One look at

his arms, literally ripping through the huge
tattoo that covers them, is enough to warn
you. The posse of SFL fighters came from
right across the length of the country—from
Haryana and Punjab to Kerala, with their
legacy of wrestlers and boxers and the
backyard akhadas. Then there are the boys
from the South, who enjoy the distinction of having the indigenous martial art,
Kalaripayattu, as their mainstay. They stare
each other down, not with the intention
of brawling, but trying to figure out each
other’s strength. But it’s not always so
peaceful. They don’t really believe in actions
speaking louder than words, but they don’t
shy away from it either.
A young 22-year-old mohawk-ed fighter,
Mohammad Shabbir, isn’t the sort who’d
mince words when the opportunity to diss
a rival comes up. Hailing from Thrissur,
Shabbir quickly realised that, more than
physical strength, excelling in combat

Home Is Where The Ring Rests

“I’m not dancing,
fool. I’m about to
kick your butt.”

An array of vibrant fighting gear—boxing
gloves, shin and elbow guards, headgear,
groin guards—is strewn liberally across
the floor and shelves of the gym. You
can’t miss the mannequin stuffed with
the precision of a taxidermist and mummified in black latex, something which
gives you some raunchy S&M ideas...
that’s before you see a fighter pound the
daylights out of it.
Despite the large number of fighters,
from the teens to the forties, there’s a
sense of belonging all around, punctuated by some ill-tempered bouts and
volleys of abuse as someone hurts
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able machismo, or at least till the trainer
steps in. It takes just one sharp command—
a tone that sounds more like a military
commander ordering troops at a survival
camp for soldiers who’re about to go into
battle—for the athletes to get serious about
their training regimen. And forget friendly
banter or overzealous discussion about
their respective disciplines. You know, the
wrestlers think a ground game is the best,
while the Muay Thai fighters find a swift
kick to the head works wonders.
The right training is essential because all
it takes is one stray blow that can put you
to sleep for good. Fatalities are very rare but
not unheard-of in MMA, because a unified
code of rules has been standardised across
the world over the last few years. Sam
Vasquez’s death in 2007 from a Renegades
Extreme Fighting bout is one of the only
recorded deaths, but rules and safety measures have become far more stringent.
The training begins with the basics: How
to deal a blow and how to duck one. With
trainers who have worked at an international level and are accomplished fighters
on the competitive sports sphere, the edicts
of safety are paramount and often a rude
shock for some of the fighters more attuned
to bringing on the pain. It’s an experience
for them and for anyone who looks in:
You’ll find amazing suppleness and agility

“Please don’t
force me to put
on these gloves.
Pretty please?”

Allen, just as he is about
to connect with Anup’s
jaw. Anup’s jaw, just as it
is about to groan.

it is a free-flowing form of combat that has no form, and
lets you take on anyone from any full-contact discipline.
in the limbs of a really bulked-up wrestler,
or a great amount of force in a wafer-thin
martial artiste. The trainers work hard to
give every MMA aspirant the flexibility of
a gymnast’s body and the brute force of a
power-lifter. The gruelling training session
involves practising different moves of
sparring, striking and taking down as the
fighters move in synchronised coordination
to the beat of a trainer’s voice. The smell of
stale sweat soon begins to hang heavily in
the tube-lit expanse, as the fighters gear up
to move to the next round of taking down
opponents in one-on-one mock duels.
Given their initial training and body
types, it is natural for fighters to develop an
affinity for a particular form of martial art.
It usually revolves around either a striking
form (boxing or kickboxing) or a grappling
form (wrestling or jiu-jitsu), and while they
may balance it out through intense crosstraining, it is easy to figure out the origins.
A penchant to strike or grapple makes it
important to pit opponents from diverse
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backgrounds against each other so that,
for instance, a striker knows how to tackle
a grappler, and vice-versa. The bout is as
mental as it is physical, as famed UFC champion Georges St-Pierre has often said in
interviews. As grapplers take down strikers
and lock them into a vice-like grip restricting movement of the striker’s limbs, and
as strikers keep grapplers at bay with swift
kicks and knees, you begin to understand
that the fight is won by preempting your
opponent’s move. Submission is in part
an accompaniment to observation as you

constantly rationalise your opponents’
weakness and counter his strengths.
This is what brings out the beauty and
reinforces the philosophy behind the evolution of MMA, a free-flowing form of combat
that has no form, and prepares you to face
someone who comes from any kind of fullcontact sport.
Fighters alternately hit moments of
shrieking crescendo that echo in surroundsound within the whitewashed walls of
the gym. Then come moments of complete
silence when you sense the whispering

whistles of the air as they move about in
adept light-footed precision. As a training
session comes to an end, there are audible
grunts and pants. During the break, camaraderie returns as the fighters chat, pray or
simply listen to each other. It seems like a
veritable calm before a storm, because you
have just seen the destruction even the
most diminutive of these players can cause.
Or how a quiet disposition allows someone
to let his limbs do the talking in the ring.
In the real world—or the ring at the Andheri Sports Complex in Mumbai—fans await
the boom as international MMA champs
James Thompson and Bob Sapp go at it. As
exciting as that is, what become “Whoa! Did
you see that?” moments are when homegrown athletes who look like wrestlers
are taken down by guys you’d think were
runners. Amidst the frenzied crowds and
blazing lights, the fighters—fresh from
training and rested for good measure–make
their giddy entry into the world of Indian
sports. It’s uneasy at best, but then they
enter the ring.
Kick, punch, pound. Some stagger, some
fall. But all of them rise. It’s time to head
back to the gym. Grunt.
APRIL 2012